March 01, 2011

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Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said he’ll be “pushing for changes” to a House-passed bill that calls for more than $600 million in cuts to the Homeland Security Department, which oversees security of the nation’s borders.

Democrats have said the House GOP plan would eliminate nearly 900 Border Patrol agent positions and slash $272 million for border surveillance and other technology at a time when the GOP has called for beefed up security along the U.S. border with Mexico.

But Kyl, who sponsored a 10-point border security plan with fellow Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, argued that no specific cuts to border security have been identified yet.

“Now I don’t believe those reductions are a good idea. … “ Kyl said. “But I think it was an overall cut [to Homeland Security], not a cut to specific pieces of the border patrol budget.”

“I think that the overall cut would do damage,” he added, “but it depends on where you apply the cuts as to exactly what damage is done.”

The House proposal, fiercely opposed by Democrats, is a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government running for the remaining seven months of fiscal year 2011 while making $61 billion in cuts.

Posted by Scott Wong 04:24 PM

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The Republicans have been in the majority in the House just since January. They control one branch of the government and we have the other two branches waiting on them to do it all? The Democrats still have the majority in the Senate and they have the White House. What's wrong with them they can't do anything? We pay them a lot of money for doing nothing. I do see and improvement though it looks like some of the Democrats are starting to read again.